Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to deport US citizens to prison in El Salvador, which is apparently his new American gulag. In a press conference at the White House, his Press Secretary admitted that Trump was looking for a way to revoke the citizenship of naturalized citizens in order to deport them. Apparently he is also working on trying to retroactively revoke the citizenship of people born within the United States in order to deport them as well.
On April 6, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he loves the idea of deporting U.S. citizens and that it would be an honor to send them to El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
On March 21, Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, that American citizens should be deported for damaging Tesla cars. That came after protesters torched the vehicles because Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is director of Trump's federal budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. "Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!" Trump wrote.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/arti...
In the words of Martin Niemoller:
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me”
Comments
The Fourth Reich Has Arrived
When citizens can be deported without due process and taken from the streets and from schools then it is only one step from the American equivalents of Dachau, Auschwitz and Belsen Bergen. I fear it is too late to save US democracy. You already have enablers like the cold eyed Steven Miller in the White House, an Eichmann analog.
ICE has become the Gestapo, and the Czar of deportations openly laments that he cannot (yet) lynch immigrants.
The President is a megalomaniacal sociopath ably assisted by Elon Musk, a gleefully destructive juvenile delinquent, and a fanatical religious nutcase of a Vice President. The Republican Party has lost any semblance of a spine and the Democrats are apparently tearing each other to pieces finding a scapegoat for their loss of the 5 November election. Nobody is looking out for the public.
Canada is a beacon of hope, but how can a nation of 40 million eventually resist the most powerful military in the world with a population base eight times as big? Although the Vietnamese did it with guerilla tactics. Is that the future?
I can only hope that the crew of crazies in charge in the USA do not precipitate a hot war with China. We here in Australia have US bases on our soil and it's a certainty that they would be prime targets for a nuclear attack. The Chinese don't love us and I doubt that America would come to our aid other than to retaliate for the losses inflicted on their forces.
The signs are not good.
9 years ago
My wife and I left the US to retire in Ireland. I was born in Ireland and my wife was born in the USA. We now both have joint US/Irish citizenship. There were several reasons for our departure, cost of healthcare in retirement was probably #1. A close second was mental health which was deteriorating due to being angry all the time at the direction the country was headed.
In hindsight it was the best decision of our lives. We fear for the continuing payments of our social security but we have other sources of income, own our own house outright and no debt. We fear for relatives and friends who are still in the States. I was proud to become an American citizen in 2008. This is no longer true.
He's an unsettling man...
All this pain and suffering he's causing simply to turn America into his own personal HOA populated only by the rich like him.
I've heard he also wants to revoke citizenship from Native Americans. He wants to classify the people who are literally, in every sense of the word, not native Americans.
Not only should he be impeached. He should also be made to live as a lower middle-class American citizen for the same length of time he's managed to stay in office. With all the privilages, and lack there of, afforded to such. With no additional assistance to be given to him.
Deportation Falsehood
Here's a reason why the current administration doesn't want Due Process of "illegal aliens" --
The Federal code's definitions are: The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States. and The term “immigration officer” means any employee or class of employees of the Service or of the United States designated by the Attorney General, individually or by regulation, to perform the functions of an immigration officer specified by this chapter or any section of this title.
So what does the Federal law actually say? It's 8 U.S.C. § 1325 if you want to check out the complete law. (This is slightly condensed--I removed clauses about repeat offenders)
Got it? Had there been Due Process for each first-time arrestee, the most severe punishment would be $250 and six months in jail. For most--the obvious non-gang members--it'd be as little as a $50 fine and no jail time! It's been said that the administration is committing at least two major felonies: grabbing people off the street without due process is kidnapping, and the international transportation constitutes human trafficking.
The complete disregard for Federal Law means that anyone in the country could be in jeopardy ..
My point exactly…….
Not to mention the fact that the administration is obviously concentrating on those who speak out against it, or protest the actions of Trump’s friends and heroes - e.g. Netanyahu.
And as I stated, they are going after people who are legally in the U.S., not to mention the statements regarding trying to figure out how to strip U.S. citizens of their status in order to deport them as well.
How many of the SS concentration camps were not actually in Germany? Sound familiar?
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
The vast majority
Without doing a comprehensive fact check on your question: How many of the SS concentration camps were not actually in Germany? My answer is: The vast majority!
You have to remember that Germany as a “unified” political entity did not exist until 1871, when Otto von Bismark unified the northern Germanic states under the predominance of the king of Prussia (who then became the Emperor of Germany). Until then, the Germanic states was just a conglomeration of increasingly fractured countries (due to inheritance splitting) ruled by kings, dukes, counts, earls and even barons. These rulers would get together and elect an “emperor” to defend against outside enemies.
By the late middle ages the power was shifting from the Mediterranean Sea into the Alps. And the “Holy Roman Empire” had moved its power center from Rome to Vienna.
After the reformation of 1495 and the ensuing counter-reformation the “Latin” kingdoms (Spain, France and Portugal), dominated by the Church of Rome, focused on the conquest of the West Indian and East India with conversion to Christianity at gun-point. And thus the permeation of the Catholic doctrine and practice with vast chunks of tribal and pagan religion, elements and practices. The Catholic faith, as practiced by over 80% of the inhabitants of Paraguay has a lot more in common with the ancient tribal religions than with what is written in the Bible.
But back to Central Europe. The Germanic states where led by the Kingdoms of Austria, Bavaria, Hanover and Prussia. Until Victoria ascended to the throne, the King of Hanover was also the King of England. And the “English” kings were more fluent in German than in English. By the 1700s it had become tradition that the King of Austria (who was also the King of Hungary) was also elected and proclaimed as the “Holy Roman Emperor”. This made the other Germanic rulers jealous, virtually bankrupted them for trying to one-up the pomp of Vienna and eventually lead to the creation of the German Empire under Prussia to counter-balance the Austrian Empire.
The territory of the Austrian Empire included beyond Austria itself big parts of what today is Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and north-eastern Italy. The whole west bank of the Rhine river has historically been considered German territory, and belonged to the German Empire. As well as the Baltic coast up to Lithuania, the borderlands between Poland and Czechia, and going around Slovakia into western Ukraine and Moldova. The city of Odessa was considered a German city. In the south-east the Volga is historically considered the far eastern frontier of German settlements.
After World War 1 the victors (mainly France, but also England and Italy, and to a lesser extent the USA) took away vast territories from both Germany and Austria. Southern Tirol and Trieste went to Italy, the Balkan territories were conglomerated into the artificial new state of Yugoslavia, Hungary and Moldova became independent, Romania grew to the north, Ukraine grew to the west, Czechia and Slovakia became independent, Poland was created from what was mostly Prussian territory, and the west bank of the Rhine was annexed by France.
After the humiliation of the peace treaty, where Germany (and Austria) had been deliberately excluded from the negotiations, and the financial ruin imposed by reparations, is it any surprise that Hitler tried to restore the historical Germanic territories?
There were concentration camps all over the German fatherland, as well as through most of the occupied territory. As to the extermination camps established as part of the “final solution”. Even though all six are now in polish territory, only the three easternmost were in territory that could not be considered as traditionally or historically German.
After World War 2, Russia expanded its borders west by annexing territories from Belarus and Ukraine. As compensation it granted them territories that had belonged to Poland and Germany. And Poland was compensated by the southern half of East Prussia and a huge tract of eastern frontier of the German core territory. Russia also instigated an ethnic cleansing by expelling all inhabitants from the the territories it annexed, and telling them to go and loot and cleanse the former German territories along their own western frontiers. Many families had to flee overnight for their lives and lost everything to expropriation without any due process.
In the final treaty of World War 2, signed 45 years after the so-called Victory in Europe, the German state accepted the borders as they existed in 1990. This so-called Two-plus-Four treaty was complemented by the Polish-German Border Treaty signed later that same year, putting an end [finally] to World War 2 in Europe.
What the Arabs (and Palestinians) have been doing in the Middle East, and what Putin is doing in Eastern Europe, is exactly the same thing that Hitler tried to do in Germany between 1933 and 1945: Restore the territorial borders to a state that existed at some time in the past. And unfortunately the beacon of liberty and equality that has been a beacon of great hope for many people for centuries, but especially for over sixty years since the end of World War 2 has become greatly tarnished.
Those who refuse to study history, and learn from history, are bound to repeat the errors made in history. Often to a greater extent and with far worse consequences.
Actually, that was a rhetorical question……
The one fact that most people never seem to realize, is that the there were more Austrians in the SS than there were Germans. Yes, the majority of concentration camps were outside of Germany - just as Trump is shipping people to his new concentration camps in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Demonstrations Every Single Day
I live next door to ICE and to a Tesla Dealership. Musk didn't have the sense just to stick to electric cars. Trump is perverting the very words engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. I'll be very surprised if someone does not ___ him. This reminds me of the history about Germany in 1936.
People are very distressed, and they should be...
Gwen Brown
What surprises me ...
... is that the USA is not a democracy and probably never has been. Trump is governing by diktat using so-called Executive Orders. He has more power than any British politician (or even the king for that matter). He's doing things on a whim without any recourse to congress. How is this possible? We had a dreadful PM a few years ago who was kicked out in 49 days - Liz Truss notoriously didn't outlast a lettuce! Because of your rigid electoral cycle you have no real means of replacing a president other than installing an equally noxious Vice-President. You have lost a lot of friends/allies and built walls rather than bridges.
We have a serious issue in the UK right now concerning a a blast furnace which needs raw materials to keep going (if it is shut down it will leave the UK without a means of making steel). In order for the government to step in to save it the PM has recalled Parliament (currently on its Easter hols) in order to pass a Bill (ie new law) to make it happen. The government cannot do it without Parliament's permission. No Executive Orders here. Parliament sitting on a Saturday is a very rare thing.
I'm staggered and sad.
The USA is indeed not a democracy
A democracy is one in which decisions are made by a direct vote of the populace. Many city/states of ancient Greece were democracies.
The USA is a democratic republic wherein the populace democratically elects representatives to make those decisions. Unfortunately, once in power, they often become examples of the axiom "Power Corrupts." Our system does provide ways of removing representatives, however it is a long drawn out process and is often imperfectly attempted.
There is supposed to be a "balance of power" created by having three branches of government. However, any good politician can find a workaround. Laws are to be enacted by a process that require both the House and the Senate to agree and then be signed by the President. This process takes month and sometimes years.
However, by executive order policies can be put in place that have the effect of law overnight thereby short circuiting the "balance of power" and it takes months, sometimes years to repeal them.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
One of the biggest problems we have…….
Currently is the antiquated electoral college system, which harkens back to the days of slavery. The system was designed to give heavier weight to the slave states, because slaves were not counted equally as white men when determining the total population count of each state. The electoral college was part of the so-called three-fifths compromise.
At the time of the framing of our Constitution, the northern and southern states had roughly the same population. However, since that population included slaves in the southern states, slaves who were not allowed to vote, the northern states would have an obvious edge in the popular vote. Hence the three-fifths compromise, which counted each slave as three-fifths of a person. This not only awarded some 42 more seats in Congress to the southern states, but has also to this date allowed states that were traditionally slave states to vote repeatedly above their weight.
The ultimate impact of this, along with other voter suppression laws that have been enacted in the past, as well as those being enacted even today, is that states with lower populations have been able to exercise control over our elections, quite often in contradiction to the desires of the majority of that population.
The electoral college allows the President to ignore the desires of the majority of the population as long as he or she wins enough electoral college votes. Thus, quite often even when the majority of the population votes for a liberal Democrat, a conservative Republican wins the election.
In the 2024 election, Trump did in fact win more popular votes than Harris, but he still did not win a majority of the popular vote. Contrary to what the Orange Asshole keeps claiming, he did not win a majority of the popular vote. Trump won 49.8% of the vote, while Harris won 48.3% - so his so-called “mandate” is based on winning 1.5% more of the popular vote, while still not getting a majority.
The electoral college was designed to give southern states an unfair advantage in Congress and in Presidential elections, and it is still doing so to this day! It is an antiquated system that puts the will of the minority above the will of the majority. It puts the lie to the idea that each vote counts - they obviously don’t count equally in this country.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
An Appropriate Anthem
Sane America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bkfsbajLaE